Meru Cabs CEO Siddhartha Pahwa quits

Meru Cabs's chief executive officer Siddhartha Pahwa has resigned from the company after a five-year stint at the country's first taxi aggregator.

"I have spent good five years at Meru. It is now a stable organisation with cash break-even and is growing profitably," Pahwa told ET. "I have a few venture ideas in mind. I will start working on them soon after taking a short break," he said, adding that he was leaving Meru due to personal reasons.

Pahwa will hand over business responsibility to Meru’s chief technology officer Nilesh Sangoi on December 31, 2016.

Meru was founded by serial entrepreneur Neeraj Gupta in 2007. Four years later, the company hired Pahwa, a chartered accountant, to spearhead the company’s growth.

When Pahwa joined Meru, the company was an asset-heavy, call centre booking-based, and a loss-making organisation. He modified the business model to 100% asset-light, improved the utilisation of assets, launched the Meru app and led regulatory changes in the taxi industry.

According to Pahwa, the Indian taxi industry in India will continue growing at 45% compound annual growth. “Once the capital dumping stops, every player will make reasonable margin in this category. In the near future, some consolidation opportunities will also emerge,” he said, adding that the industry will replace private ownership of vehicles.

In the past two years, Meru has been aggressive in its fight against Uber and Ola even with the limited capital at the company’s disposal. It was the first cab company in India to introduce carpool services in October. In a bid to fight Ola and Uber’s low-cost offering, the company also introduced Meru Genie service in eight cities including Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Delhi, and Mumbai, at competitive prices.

In September, Meru forged a global alliance with Europe’s taxi service, Taxis G7 to launch eCab in India, a move which would help the company acquire international travellers visiting India. eCab is an app, incubated by Taxis G7, which seeks to consolidates taxi companies around the world to build a one-stop destination for any international traveler to hail a taxi.